The streak camera is a high speed time measurement instrument with resolution in the picoseconds to femtoseconds. At a streak camera's entrance slit, incident photons are used to generate electrons that are accelerated through the streak tube towards a phosphor screen. The electrons' trajectories are deflected by a time-varying electric field (sweeping voltage) applied perpendicular to the direction of travel (as shown in FIG. 1). As a result, the deflection distance of photoelectrons on the phosphor screen is correlated to the time they arrive at the photocathode.
The sweep voltage of a streak camera can take the form of a ramp voltage. In many cases, the ramp voltage is not linear (e.g. using the rising or falling edge of a sinusoidal wave) so the accuracy of the temporal measurement of a streak camera relies on careful calibration of the nonlinearity of the shape of the sinusoidal voltage.
The precision of the temporal measurement in a streak camera depends on the stability of the sweeping voltage. Typical sources of error arise from 1) amplitude variation (vertical axis in FIG. 2); and 2) phase variation (horizontal variation in FIG. 2). Current calibration techniques are expensive, ineffective at the extremes of the sweep range, and require repetitive calibration between observations. A more economical and effective solution to both issues of amplitude and phase variation would provide a more viable and reliable streak camera.